Lie To Me
by Tahllydarling
Summary: He hesitated, fingers poised above the keypad as he deliberated over whether to finish dialling the other number, the number that he was steadily weaning himself off calling, deciding against it when he realised that hearing that other voice would not help him tonight. One Shot.


Clint didn't remember getting back to his apartment. He remembered nothing of the journey or the conversations that he might have had on the way. His head was full of what had happened on the mission, the smell of cordite still hanging heavy in his nostrils and the sound of screaming echoing in his ears.

Bracing his hands on either side of the sink, he stared down the reflection in the mirror, barely recognising the features that stared back at him. Exhaustion had brought a grey pallor to his usually tanned skin and his skin was chapped from the exposure of spending almost nineteen hours on a russian rooftop in mid winter. He was tired, a little wired and extremely pissed off, which had never been a good combination for him. Pissed off usually ended in something being broken, though whether it was an item of furniture or one of the bones in his hand would depend largely on how the remainder of the evening panned out.

He stripped out of his suit, ignoring the chorus of aches that made themselves known, turned on the radio and cranked the dial on his shower. With practised efficiency he checked himself over for injuries, finding a minor wound to his right arm and some bruising that would probably slow him down for a day or two. Most of the blood on his skin wasn't his own and that was the reason that he wasn't in the frame of mind to play politics tonight. Fury had taken one look at him when he disembarked the jet and wisely sent him home to sleep it off before they did the debriefing. To say that the state of affairs was unusual would be an understatement but tonight he wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth.

The water was scalding hot, painful against skin that had yet to fully thaw out after hours of cold weather, but he didn't care. He stood beneath the spray until his skin throbbed and all the water swirling into the drain was almost clear before he stepped out of the tub. Wrapping a towel around his hips, he arranged the first aid supplies on the bathroom counter and went to work stitching up the slice to his arm.

Half an hour later found him dressed in only a pair of boxer shorts and slouched in his favourite armchair out in the lounge. He had examined and rejected the contents of his refrigerator, nothing but a block of cheese, a tomato and a wilted lettuce, and opted for a different type of sustenance - the tumbler of scotch-over-ice at his elbow. Most of the time he preferred beer and stayed away from the whiskey but tonight he felt the need for something stronger. Tonight he had too much going on in his head to trust that his usual beer or two would take the edge off long enough to let him sleep. Exhaustion warred with the need to move, the need to scream aloud and rail against the ineptitude of the handler who had messed up the mission. He was not going to take the blame for what had happened out there. He was not going to let the days events torment him more than they already had.

Natasha's voicemail answered his call at the fourth ring, the automated voice requesting that he leave a message. Clint hung up without speaking, but not before glancing at his watch and realising that it was way too early for him to be disturbing her anyway. Nat had been overseas on a mission of her own for more than a week and he wasn't sure if she was even back yet but she was the only person he had left to call, the only person who understood him and cared enough to be there in the small hours of the morning when most sane and rational people were sleeping. She was there for him, he was there for her, that was the deal.

Three whiskeys later and the burn of the alcohol was the only heat in him. He hesitated, fingers poised above the keypad as he deliberated over whether to finish dialling the other number, the number that he was steadily weaning himself off calling, deciding against it when he realised that hearing that other voice would not help him tonight. If anything, the sound of the implacably calm voice at the other end of the line would be more painful than any of the injuries he currently carried to his body and his pride. He set the phone down again and took another swallow of whiskey. He would not call Coulson's number tonight just to hear the recording of the man's voice on the answering service as he had a hundred times since his death. He wouldn't do that to himself. He wouldn't.

He was half asleep in the chair, exhaustion overriding the screaming in his mind and the restless twitching of his limbs, when he heard the soft knock on the door. Any thought of slumber evaporated in an instant, his body and mind on full alert. He glanced at the clock and found that it was a little before two-thirty in the morning. Surely Fury hadn't come seeking answers at this hour? Had Sherridan pointed all the blame his way and managed to paint the events in a light that made the director think Barton was too much of a risk to allow him out into the field again? Common sense won out, the knock was far too polite, too different to the authoritative pounding that Fury would no doubt employ in such a situation, didn't mean that he was answering the door though.

A second or two passed and then he heard the jingle of keys and the sound of the tumblers in the locks turning. He'd only ever given keys to his place to two people - he knew which of them was letting herself into his apartment in the dead of night. How she knew that he was there he didn't know, but she had an uncanny knack for showing up at his door when he was hanging by a thread.

Natasha stepped inside almost silently, a bag of takeout in her hands. She didn't seem surprised to find him awake, nor did she seem particularly surprised to note the nearly empty glass at his elbow, though she did arch her eyebrow in silent acknowledgement of its contents. She knew better than most that he saved the good stuff for nights when he was feeling particularly raw.

"Figured you'd be hungry," she stated as if it were an obvious conclusion, raising the bag to show him what she had to offer. Without waiting for a response she moved into the kitchen, gathering plates and cutlery with the practised movements of someone who knew her way around his space. She was casually dressed in jeans, soft leather boots and a checkered shirt in shades of blue and green, her hair loose about her shoulders as it usually was.

"Thought you were in Europe," he remarked, maintaining his position but conceding to turn his head and watch her as she set the table.

"I was," she replied, "got in a couple of hours ago, checked in with Fury, listened to my answering service and then came pretty much straight here."

"Nice try Nat, I didn't even leave a message."

She looked up, green eyes pinning him to the chair. "No," she said quietly, "you didn't."

He knew what that look meant, she was irritated that he hadn't given her any indication of how he was feeling or filling her in on the details of what had happened, irritated and concerned. He couldn't blame her for that, he'd have felt the same were their roles reversed. The truth hit him then, she hadn't come over just because she had recognised his number on her answer phone. "Fury tell you how badly things got screwed up?" he asked, already knowing the answer. Why else would she be here in the small hours of the morning after they'd been out in separate missions?

"He told me that you were the reason, the only reason, any of our people made it out of there," she admitted. "As for me being here, I know you'd do the same for me if our roles were reversed. Now come on, help me eat all the Chinese food I bought on the way over or I might never fit into my suit again."

"Not hungry," he replied, realising that at that particular moment it was true. The whiskey had numbed his urge to eat and while he couldn't deny that it would be a good idea to get some calories into his body, he had no appetite. Only the realisation that he was brooding let Natasha coax him to the table where she had set out the food containers and was busy helping herself. If his near nakedness bothered her she kept the opinion to herself but she'd seen him in such a state so many times that she probably didn't even notice.

It was an old game between them, one that they had played repeatedly when one of them was injured or hurting. They brought one another food that would be almost too tempting to ignore, ensuring that their bodies had the best chance of swift recuperation. After a near case of hypothermia he knew that he needed to eat, regulate his body temperature and sleep, he'd done one of those things and a scalding shower hadn't really been the right way to do that. Natasha however was playing hardball, she'd bought all of his favourites. Tempting as the smell was, he wasn't sure that he would be able to stomach it, not when the anger and anxiety were churning up his insides.

Just as he was about to bolt from the table, Natasha began to talk. There were a hundred things that Clint Barton was, but ill-mannered was not one of them. He stayed at the table and he listened, allowing her to fork some food onto his plate as she spoke, lifting his fork and taking a few bites out of courtesy. After the first tentative mouthfuls he found that he was ravenous, his body reminding him that he hadn't eaten in almost two days and that exposure to the cold temperatures had depleted him of any calories that he had consumed long before now.

As if she was afraid that he would stop eating if she stopped talking, Natasha maintained a steady stream of conversation throughout their late supper, finally falling silent when he had finished eating and reclined in his chair. She would never expect him to admit to it but her presence was just what he had needed to help him through the difficulties of the night.

"Let me take a closer look at that arm," she exclaimed, the words neither a request nor a command but somewhere in between. He knew better than to argue.

He angled his body toward her, allowing her to examine the stitches that he had given himself when he got out of the shower. "Just a flesh wound," he mumbled, "couldn't keep my damn hand steady when I was stitching it closed."

She saw her opening and took it. "You want to talk about what happened out there?" she asked. Her voice was neither sympathetic nor firm, not too quiet and nothing like a demand - exactly the right tone for a situation like this when she could no doubt see that he was struggling. "I hear Sherridan really screwed things up."

"That would be putting it mildly," he agreed, surprised to find that the anger of earlier in the night had given way to an ability to state the facts without emotion. Progress indeed. Days without sleep were beginning to catch up on him. "The guy couldn't coordinate a mission to find his own ass on a map."

Natasha nodded but didn't press for details, instead she went directly for the crux of the matter. "That isn't what's really bothering you tonight though is it?"

Clint considered lying to her, he really did. It wasn't that he didn't want her to know how much he missed Coulson or how stupid he felt for calling a man who had been dead for over a year just to hear the sound of his voice; it was the fact that to mention Agent Phil Coulson caused them both pain. The problem with lying to her was that he couldn't do it when she was right there offering him a chance to share the things that were tormenting him. He met her eyes and gave her the truth before he could change his mind. "I almost called Coulson tonight," he admitted. "Old habits I guess … "

Natasha stilled but said nothing then abruptly rose from her chair and swept into the bathroom. Guilt flooded him, knowing that he was responsible for whatever she was feeling. A few seconds she was back, packaging for a sterile dressing in hand. She sank back into her seat, tearing open the packet and covering the line of stitches in his arm. It was a long moment before she spoke again.

"Don't ever feel like you can't talk about him," she told him softly, "I miss him too."

He saw what the admission cost her but just like that she cut through any awkwardness, pulling the issue to the surface and reassuring him that it was natural to miss the third member of their team. Coulson had been handler to both of them for as long as they had been with SHIELD, a man who never showed anger toward them no matter how off script they went but could, and would, tear a strip off anyone who criticised them. For years he had been the steady, calming presence in the chaos of their lives and then suddenly one day he was gone.

Clint reached for her instinctively, closing his hand around her slender wrist. Natasha relaxed into him, touching her brow to his own as they shared a silent moment of remembrance for what they had lost. "You should get some rest," she suggested eventually, making no effort to move until he was ready. "Come on."

He had his own room at her place, a room where nobody but he slept, but in his apartment the second bedroom had always been as much Coulson's as hers. There were too many reminders there, too many memories. Since Coulson's death Natasha hadn't spent as much time at his place as she used to, but on the occasions that she did stay the night she either camped out on the couch or she crashed on the free side of his bed, reasoning that the mattress was wide enough for them to sleep side by side without actually touching one another. She was crashing with him that night, she wouldn't leave him when she knew that he was emotionally raw.

When they were both beneath the covers Natasha rolled onto her side and her hand reached out from beneath the blanket to find his own where it rested atop the covers, fingers curling around his loosely in a silent offer of support. He didn't say anything, just accepted the gesture and found that he could breathe properly for the first time since he stepped off the jet. She had that effect on him, grounding him, rolling safety and security, acceptance and understanding into every action. Family.

He was half asleep, the warmth of the bed and the comfort of her presence easing him toward the rest his body badly needed, when the words escaped him. "It gets easier right Nat?" he murmured, not sure whether she would answer.

Her own voice was full of everything she didn't say when she replied, "what do you want me to say?"

The answer that came out of his mouth was the last thing that he expected and the most honest he could give. "Lie to me," he wasn't sure that he meant it, not really, but time and reality weren't helping with the situation in the way that people kept telling him they would. A lie might sit better with him tonight than the truth.

It was the one thing that they never did,they lied to the rest of the world but they never lied to one another. Propping herself up on one elbow, she looked down at him weighing the weight of his words. "Yes it gets easier, every day it'll hurt less."

That was the moment that he knew how much he really meant to Natasha Romanoff, the moment that she lied to him to make him feel better even though she didn't want to. "Liar," he chuckled, "but thank you."

Silence fell. Natasha lay back against the pillows, her hand still wrapped around his. Sleep pulled at him. He heard her breath even out, readying for sleep.

"Do you want to know what I really think?" she asked, voice barely a whisper.

Clint was too far gone to form an articulate reply but he'd heard the words and he wanted to know. "Sure," he managed to mumble, curling his body around the hand that he still held.

"I don't think that it's meant to get easier Clint, " she sighed, shifting closer so that he could keep her hand. "I don't think that the pain ever goes away; I think that we just have to find a way to live with it."

That made sense to him, more sense than the people who claimed that the pain would go away. Nothing would take away the reality that he had lost the most significant father figure he'd ever had way too soon. He tried to form the words to agree with her but the heavy tides of sleep stole them away and all he could do was tighten his grip on her hand as they carried him off. The last thing he was aware of was the warmth of his partner's body at his back as she tucked the blankets closer around them both and then there was nothing.


End file.
